Visit msdn.microsoft.com and click on "Terms of Use". For a quicker ride, click here
I'd paste some of the Terms of Use, but then I'd be violating the third paragraph. Actually, taking the fascistic bent (hey, when has Microsoft ever been a stickler on the terms?) you can't write a program based on the information presented there, since it'd be a derivative work of the information presented there (again, third paragraph).
Of course, this posting is also a derivative work.
Microsoft is too, except it's called outsourcing to India.
True, and other companies are doing it too, except that many actually are experiencing a net decrease in labor force, not just a labor force displacement.
Giving away free software is no guarantee that there's enough money in the bank to keep MS operating through the end of the year.
True, although the $3 or $4 billion profit per quarter and 80+% profit margins in the Office and Windows sections (with the current donations, "super deals" to the OEMs, academic versions, etc., mind!) sure do.
How much of the donations are real I-could-buy-a-Macintosh cash? How much of the donations are real hardware? And how much are just licenses and software?
Although you make a very good point about the benefits of donating software (note that many do; I just took advantage of our campus agreements in StarOffice and a calendaring client for Linux), they still can't give out actual cash in grants, stipends, awards, etc. And the school actually has to break away on the desktop from their established Microsoft standard (I don't know of any that don't at least unofficially have one (peer, professor, and administrator pressure to use Microsoft formats and software; try getting help on Linux from the campus helldesk), and many have a stated one). Apple has double the problem, since you can't just install MacOS X on some old lab machine; you have to go buy an Apple.
But I think we're pretty much on the same page. I think.
Lacking marketshare is just an excuse for not giving or not being creative enough to sway the people who make the decisions at the Unis. Maybe that's why these companies lack marketshare in the first place.
No, but it leads not not having enough money to donate lots of goods and services. You have to make ends meet. Microsoft is one of a very few, if not the only tech company making money right now. Sun and others are laying off staff. While it's short-sighted, you have to have a long-term future in order to reap the benefits of long-term strategies. The companies are just struggling to get by, and they're being blocked by a lack of money and Microsoft's strangle hold on the industry.
I'm a firm believer in corporate Darwinism. You either survive or you provide sustenance for those stronger.
Sometimes superpredators can evolve and decimate the ecosystem. Prime example is humans. How many species have we and will we yet make extinct? How many are being forced to change due to our changing of the environment (e.g. sea turtles getting hit on the highway since they mistake the lights for the moon)? But the analogy doesn't hold exactly anyway. It's not a simple survival-of-the-fittest, especially in the tech market, although definite parallels are there.
I know for a fact that the Windows copies are for upgrades (although they may or may not be full copies on the CD, it says so in the license and at the info page (here and here)). The MS Office stuff looks like it's for the full version (hmm).
A new important point is that, if the Uni decides not to renew the Campus agreement, you're treated the same as if you had not graduated (i.e., your license is revoked). The more I read about the program, the more ominous it seems, especially when you factor in the university's liabilities as Microsoft may see it (and they're the ones who can force an audit of every computer involved with the campus!)
Good points on the fact that the students never see the fees. Doubly so, because they're on their parents nickel, and the fees are hidden.
Finally, while MS Studio may cost $2k for most people, it's only $100 for the full Visual Studio system, so it would take exactly two semesters at $50 each to pay for it as a student (and as a university, I believe). The student rates for the other software is comparable (ca. $100 each). The students and university in general is getting ripped off, especially when you factor in the various anal clauses and things in there, and the Auditing bit.
Nothing is stopping Microsoft's competitors from doing the same. Nothing is stopping the schools from accepting Microsoft's offers.
Actually, there is. You have to have marketshare to get money, and you have to have money to give away money. Most of the tech sector is in no condition to be throwing around money on things they won't see returns for in the near future, since they would likely not have a future! The only one really making enough money to do this is Microsoft, and Microsoft monopoly and continued monopolization of old and new markets via means such as this is what's keeping competitors from doing the same.
Hmm. Now that I think about it, the Linux ones do. You can get Red Hat or SuSE or Mandrake or OpenBSD or NetBSD for free. Look at it as a campus licensing agreement that people don't seem to know or care about.
As a case in point, I've offered several times to give out copies of Linux to the bookstore for people to get. No go. They don't even want to get the free CDs to give out.
So, yes. Microsoft's monopoly is what is keeping competitors back.
Free and Open Source Software developers, friends, and associated companies give away hundreds of billions of dollars in software and services to schools, neighbors, businesses, and the world in general without requring a change of curricula or Non-Disclosure Agreement. And only the Podunk Times-Chronicle-Gazette carried the story (hint: it's in small print, buried under the "New Fat Burning Breathrough!" article on page 7).
Hmm. Hey!
We need a Free and Open Source Software Appreciation Day! Send $10 to your favorite project or something. Spend an hour translating that page to Swahili. Hug your local Linux or BSD geek!
Actually, if your University (like mine, unfortunately) has a Campus Software Agreement, it's actually not cheap. You pay for it semester after semester, whether or not you actually use all of the Microsoft software (to the tune of several million per year ($10 million / 50 thousand applicable people == 200 per year per person (you pay for this in your campus privilege fees). If someone has exact numbers on the cost of a Campus Agreement, please post!). Not only that, but a previous version is required. Therefore, if you buy a new PC, you're unlikely to actually be able to use the new version (because you already have it, as required of the OEM by Microsoft). If you do end up going down to buy a copy from your uni, you most likely don't need a new version; your old one would likely have kept you just fine (how many are still using Windows 98 with Office 97?), so you're actually shelling out quite a bit for software you either don't need or wouldn't buy ordinarily.
Indeed, you're actually paying several times ($1000-2000?) what you would ordinarily be paying.
Microsoft, of course, loves this. You (myself included!) feel like you're not getting your money's worth if you don't go down and stock up on software you're already paying for. On top of that, you're spamming friends and relatives with the latest versions of MS Office, Windows Media Player, and requesting software for their latest version. You're becoming a vital cog in their upgrade treadmill and are more effectively advertising Microsoft than their marketing department could(!), and you're paying for the privilege of helping Microsoft!
That's funny. On my single K6-2 450 with 160MB RAM, it's very fast and lightweight (the whole virtual memory space is currently 12MB, according to top).
In all seriousness, Linux works around major known bugs (e.g. F00F; you'll see Linux detecting it if you boot Linux on an affected box), and can load the latest microcode to fix any bugs the chipmaker has since squashed (if your CPU supports it, install microcode support in the kernel and install the microcode and the update; Red Hat has it by default; you'll see it patch when the system boots (dunno about other distros))
If you're wanting to recite the Top 9.9999999999999537123 Reasons to Love Your Pentium (or something like that; published (in Byte?) back in '94?), I'm all for it.;)
If you convert it to OpenOffice, you have scripting support via StarBasic. It should be identical on all platforms on which OO runs. You'll probably want to grab the OO SDK, though since (last I checked) the StarBasic documentation was best in there w.r.t. the object model.
They have a poor track record on this. Take, as a recent example, their forced opening of protocols vital to Windows from the anti-trust case. Where was that link? Aaah:
...[M]any of Microsoft's competitors have accused the company of charging inflated prices and imposing onerous terms for the code, thereby discouraging licensing of the technology, stifling competition and taking advantage of its antitrust settlement.
One condition that caused particular outcry was Microsoft charging an upfront fee of $100,000 for rivals to examine the code to see whether they want to buy it. If they don't, they only get $50,000 back. [emphesis mine]
This IM thing is a new development. There probably aren't any sources to cite yet, since this is new. However, their past behavior is indicative of future misbehavior, especially in this (interoperability) regard. Doubly so since, in the above quote, Microsoft was forced by the U.S. Department of Justice to reveal the protocols, whereas they are not required to reveal their past, present, or future IM protocols. If they're not licensing protocols under the duress of the U.S. Government, how much less are they going to interoperate voluntarily?
Microsoft simply isn't the benevolent dictator we wish it were.
make my calculations faster. Seriously. I can already do numerical stuff on my Zaurus via QPlot (and Calculon and Formulae 1, in the near future), but the Z's ARM chip lacks a floating point unit and is generally a slower chip than is current (is a Z SL 5500). More power is always welcome in my PDA. While my desktop and the group's cluster are for more intense stuff, I really like having the Z around to do a quick plot or if my desktop is far away and I need to do some numerical stuff.
Now, the probability of me feeling a woman's breast is for me to know and you to, well, not know.;)
I work on some projects as a hobby. Yes, people do drop out. People also get on board, so it about equals out (given a constant userbase). Some of the "hobby" programmers are actually paid programmers by day as well.
Some projects have companies helping out (e.g. Sun, IBM, Red Hat, SuSE, Ximian/Novell, etc.) and the programmers are paid by the company. These are usually the ones that are big and important. Hobby projects can evolve to this point.
Some projects get funded by donations, and the author works on it as a hobby. I think all "hobby" category projects fall into this, whether or not they're actively receiving or soliciting for donations; no one would say no to funding!:)
Some projects are by students or faculty at universities and paid for by the university, grant monies, and/or donations.
Some projects are government research and entirely funded by the government.
Some projects are created and mostly controlled by a company.
Really, there's nothing to fear here. Judge the software on its merits alone, not on whether or not it has another entity backing it. If it's good software, others will likely help out if the current developers leave.
Continued development is not guaranteed, but neither is the solvency of a business you buy software from. If a business goes bankrupt and/or its products discontinued, you have no recourse. If, on the other hand, an Open Source project is discontinued, others can pick up where the original developers left off. Either way, you still have a functional piece of software left (more functional, actually, in the Open Source case, since it can be recompiled for changes in extra-project dependencies, such as new library versions).
Thinking about it a little further, essentially the same economics are in effect for Open Source as for Paid/Proprietary Software. Resources are exchanged. In paid software, the company receives only money, in Open Source software, the project receives monies as well as labor (programming, documentation, sales, marketing, etc.) in exchange for the product. The more successful (i.e. widespread) a software is, the more resources the company and/or project receives. While not every copy of Open Source software is recompensed (by monies or by labor), neither is every copy of Proprietary software recompensed (paid).
Actually, that last bit would make a very interesting PhD dissertation or Master's thesis, if one were so inclined. My field of study, unfortunately, is not in that area, so it's left as an exercise for the reader.;)
Actually, given that they claim to support Real 8--for which there are players on those Other OSes and thus should play on other platforms--your analogy falls apart.
The Windows + IE requirement is artificial, since the movies would stream onto a Mac, Linux, Solaris, or other box.
Furthermore, even if your argument were valid, we are still free to complain, since a business is not supporting our chosen platform. This is how free markets are supposed to work. If we just shut up, they never hear from us. If we ask them (kindly) to please support our platform, they know that there is a market out there which they're not tapped into.
What's really dumb is that (so far as I can tell), there isn't anything that is Internet Explorer-, let alone Windows-specific there. If they do both Windows Media Format and Real Player 8, it should work on most all desktop OSes, since there is a Real Player 8 client for most desktop OSes (either through Real or through one of their "community" versions).
Excellent post. I just wish that I could give you a +1 Insightful.
Indeed, the current world language is English, as the European language was French before it, and Latin before that.
The inconsistancies you cited in the english phonic -> symbolic translation are pretty much an artifact of importing and mixing various words adn phrases (both inside the English Isles and outside). If we had the German (and apparently French) system of officially revising the Official English Language (whatever that might be), then we could eradicate the inconsistancies. However, that would cut out a chunk of the fun and history of the language. It's a tradeoff. You might also investigate the most recent revision to German, which was very much disputed (and currently is disputed, although to a lesser extent). Some (most, I think) places still use the old Rechtschreibung, because the new spellings have lost the old spelling's beauty. (that, and people don't want to re-learn the new spelling)
But don't count on the USA-dominance of the world to continue indefinitely. Nothing is forever, and somewhere along the line, another language will take the place of English as a world language.
Very, very true. I think it's already on the way out, a symptom (and cause) of which is rising anti-Americanism (sorry; anti-USA-ism just doesn't flow right). While sad in its own way (especially for us), it's also good, since it allows the chance for another culture to have the spotlight, and allows us to grow in a different direction.
When travelling abroad in Europe, I've always felt saddened by the fact that I never had to take another language in school (aside from the 2 years of Foreign Language required of me); I felt that I am missing out on something. Luckily, I've learned German (and am working on aquiring a few others to a much more limited extent ATM), but I really wish that my schools (small-town midwestern schools) had taught me Spanish in gradeschool and middleschool like my brothers' have (we moved after I left middleschool). That age is prime time for learning a new language, and it's been lost to me, because of our (lingual) americentrism. While understandable (we aren't a small country, and we don't have a ton of small neighboring countries like Europe), it's still sad.
It's not just Pommes Frites and French Fries (och, die boese, boese Amis); it's also Chips, patates fregide, frieten, ranskalaiset perunat, etc. (see also, The Wiktionary) The boese Amis aren't the only ones to rename the dish. (Query: is Pommes Frites the name the original Belgian inventor(s) gave it? Back it up, per favore.)
So far as I know, Bratkartoffeln is not about Chips, it's about fried potatoes. Different animals. I was served Bratkartoffeln in Germany; it consisted of sliced potatoes, cooked in a pan on the stove, with onions, maybe ham (has been a while), and other stuff. Same as in Amiland. We just translated the name from the German. Or did you translate it from English? Or did it get invented elsewhere? Or at the same time? Back up your assertion that the Germans invented it and that it was named Bratkartoffeln.
Stimmt, Meerrettich is called horseradish in the USA. It sounds like "Mare radish" to the non-German speaker, and is quite possibly mistranslated. Or maybe you should call it the ancient Egyptians called it instead of "ocean radish".
We don't change every word, though. consider (as a very small taste):
soiree
rendez-vous
patio
rodeo
zeitgeist
ansatz
They are all English words, borrowed directly from other languages. There are tons more. Point is, it's fairly random, due to the random nature of poeple.
Nun jetzt, im Ernst. Lass' den Hass, bitte. Die Welt waere viel gemuetlicher wenn wir einander lieben und verstehen koennten.
To Americans arrogance is something they only recognize in others.
Dein Spruch selbst war arrogant, und du hast es ja (soweit ich weiss) nicht erkannt.
Tja, fuer die Deutsche ist Arroganz etwas, was sie nur in anderen erkennen knnen. N, ich kenne zu viele nicht-arrogante Deutsche. War wohl nur einen Vorurteil, genau wie Deiner.;)
(ps: as one of the arrogant, ignorant, stupid, fremdenfeindliche Amis, I rather like the word (courriel). Has a nice ring to it.)
Thats like saying instead of buying a car with gas already in the tank, you could instead buy an empty car, push it down the road 50 miles to the nearest gas station, OR walk 50 miles to the gas station and lug a can of gas back with you OR wait for someone to drive down the road so you can siphon some gas from them.
No, you completely misunderstood what I was saying.
Point is, the OS, as viewed by the end user, would include a browser. Someone in the supply chain would include one, however no browser would be forced to be on everyone's desks.
Within your (popular) car-analogy framework, we have: Today's Situation
You buy your car from a Honda dealership, a Toyota dealership, a Ford dealership, or a used car dealership down the street. From whomever you purchase a car, the situation's the same. Because Exxon made the engine, it requires Exxon gas. Helpfully, they've included Exxon gas with your car. You can use other gas, but Exxon recommends their own gas (and requires you use it at least a little, because of how they designed the engine; heck, you've heard a silly rumor that Exxon engines sometimes turn on the engine warning light if they detect the wrong (i.e. non-Exxon) type wheel, carbuerator, distributor cap, etc., especially the once-popular but now rare DR-DOS wheel, and you've wondered once or twice in your daydreams if this couldn't have also led to some of the problems you experienced with your Exxon engine when you've used non-Exxon gas), so 95% of the car drivers out there buy only Exxon gas. Coincidentally, since the market on gas has collapsed (due to Exxon's monopoly position and abuse thereof? But you're Joe User and don't notice or care about such things), most gas stations only sell Exxon gas. They will serve you Exxon gas, and a few will let you tank up with other types of gas, but the vast majority of users drive their Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, Volvo, or whatever still using their Exxon engine with the Exxon gas, and blissfully visiting Exxon-only stations. Oh, yeah. You've vaguely heard somewhere (being Joe User, not the Greenpeace type) that Exxon's not the happy-friendly company they portray themselves to be, but rather reportedly had a bad spill up somewhere in the North, and have been rather rude to Shell and BP recently, the only (minor) competition left to them. You've also heard some rumours (you're still a little more informed than most of the Joe Users out there in some aspects) vague rumblings about problems with Exxon engines and about the number of odd things (insects?) that turn up in the Exxon gas. But, all this didn't make it into the mainstream media, since Exxon also owns a large portion of some major news sites, and since everyone knows and uses Exxon, and they seem such a nice company.... The Proposed Situation:
We still assume that all car manufacturers ship with Exxon engines. However, in this situation, Exxon actually is the happy, friendly company they portray themselves to be. The car dealers or their suppliers are allowed to ship whatever gas they want to in the cars they sell. Exxon might (or might not) require a little Exxon gas now and again, but the other gas is of higher quality and has more features (cleans various things, helps prevent those annoying attackers from effectively using sugar in your gas tank, etc.), so many dealerships and people ship the gas they like to use. Of course, you're free at some dealerships to come with your own gas, or to select from a (sometimes wide!) variety of gas. And the dealerships sometimes also get a kickback from the gas vendors, for giving people a chance to try their gas.
Usually, your hardware vendor would install a browser of their choice before you ever see the OS. If you get a white box, then you could use a floppy disk or cdr to either get the mini installer (the one that pulls the rest from over the net and has only a minimal footprint) or the full version (on cdr, with whatever other software you wanted). Whoever sold you the OS (i.e. the shop you purchased it from) could easily also add the browser to the OS or just give you an additional Applications CD with a browser on it. (is also common practice with other things, albeit a declining one, thanks the Microsoft's monopolies and peoples' reluctance to think beyond the microeconomics of their specific situation)
Really, not having a browser forced on every OS sold isn't that big of a deal; actually, it's great for the people selling hardware or OS CDs (they can get a cut from whomever they decide to give you). Microsoft "axe[d] [that] baby" when it tried to "cut off [Netscape's] air supply" by bundling IE with the monopoly's operating system and forcing vendors to ship it. Heck, even integrating it into the OS could be done in an open, modular fashion, so that one could pull IE and put in another browser. Wouldn't be good for Microsoft, though.
If you're creative, I bet you could see a plethora of other ways for middleware vendors to get in on the action (both in Free Software and a Friendly Microsoft world).
Globally setting sending text messages instead of html:
Edit->Preferences:
Mail&Newsgroups:
Send Format:
Set the send format to what you want. You can send all HTML, all text, ask you, or send it in both. Additionally, you can set plain text and html domains here.
Re:It just may make me switch back from IE
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Netscape 7.1 Released
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· Score: 3, Informative
Kiosk mode and full-screen mode are two different things.
Full-screen mode is for full-screen operation.
Kiosk mode is full-screen plus lots of lockdown options. Search bugzilla for more information on the kiosk mode development. It's in development.
Re:Sounds like a Business Opportunity to me
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Linux Usage in the UK
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· Score: 2, Insightful
A bit overdramatic, I know, but MS is usually the vendor everyone needs to 'interoperate' with, and it's harder than it needs to be.
Hmm. Yes. Interoperating with MSFT is generally much harder than it need be, especially from Linux. This isn't Linux, though; it's Microsoft. Ask the SAMBA, OpenOffice, or one of the other teams about how easy it is to reverse-engineer Microsoft's ever-changing stuff. And what's more, Microsoft deliberately changes their stuff to prevent interop.
If you want to interact with Microsoft, you need to get Microsoft to change. I say, change 'em with your wallet.
[BTW, it actually isn't as bad as it seems; OpenOffice hasn't had problems with documents I've been given, SAMBA can talk MSFT's proprietary protocol, and Linux can read/write MSFT's filesystems. Interop isn't that bad, but it's not 100% guaranteed, for the reasons I've outlined, plus the fact that they're MSFT trade secrets, and thus have to be reverse-engineered. Ideally, Microsoft would use open formats, but then they couldn't leverage their monopoly nearly as effectively.]
Slashdot Mirror
Visit msdn.microsoft.com and click on "Terms of Use". For a quicker ride, click here
I'd paste some of the Terms of Use, but then I'd be violating the third paragraph. Actually, taking the fascistic bent (hey, when has Microsoft ever been a stickler on the terms?) you can't write a program based on the information presented there, since it'd be a derivative work of the information presented there (again, third paragraph).
Of course, this posting is also a derivative work.
Dang it!!
True, and other companies are doing it too, except that many actually are experiencing a net decrease in labor force, not just a labor force displacement.
True, although the $3 or $4 billion profit per quarter and 80+% profit margins in the Office and Windows sections (with the current donations, "super deals" to the OEMs, academic versions, etc., mind!) sure do.
Although you make a very good point about the benefits of donating software (note that many do; I just took advantage of our campus agreements in StarOffice and a calendaring client for Linux), they still can't give out actual cash in grants, stipends, awards, etc. And the school actually has to break away on the desktop from their established Microsoft standard (I don't know of any that don't at least unofficially have one (peer, professor, and administrator pressure to use Microsoft formats and software; try getting help on Linux from the campus helldesk), and many have a stated one). Apple has double the problem, since you can't just install MacOS X on some old lab machine; you have to go buy an Apple.
But I think we're pretty much on the same page. I think.
No, but it leads not not having enough money to donate lots of goods and services. You have to make ends meet. Microsoft is one of a very few, if not the only tech company making money right now. Sun and others are laying off staff. While it's short-sighted, you have to have a long-term future in order to reap the benefits of long-term strategies. The companies are just struggling to get by, and they're being blocked by a lack of money and Microsoft's strangle hold on the industry.
Sometimes superpredators can evolve and decimate the ecosystem. Prime example is humans. How many species have we and will we yet make extinct? How many are being forced to change due to our changing of the environment (e.g. sea turtles getting hit on the highway since they mistake the lights for the moon)? But the analogy doesn't hold exactly anyway. It's not a simple survival-of-the-fittest, especially in the tech market, although definite parallels are there.
I know for a fact that the Windows copies are for upgrades (although they may or may not be full copies on the CD, it says so in the license and at the info page (here and here)).
The MS Office stuff looks like it's for the full version (hmm).
A new important point is that, if the Uni decides not to renew the Campus agreement, you're treated the same as if you had not graduated (i.e., your license is revoked). The more I read about the program, the more ominous it seems, especially when you factor in the university's liabilities as Microsoft may see it (and they're the ones who can force an audit of every computer involved with the campus!)
Good points on the fact that the students never see the fees. Doubly so, because they're on their parents nickel, and the fees are hidden.
Finally, while MS Studio may cost $2k for most people, it's only $100 for the full Visual Studio system, so it would take exactly two semesters at $50 each to pay for it as a student (and as a university, I believe). The student rates for the other software is comparable (ca. $100 each). The students and university in general is getting ripped off, especially when you factor in the various anal clauses and things in there, and the Auditing bit.
Actually, there is. You have to have marketshare to get money, and you have to have money to give away money. Most of the tech sector is in no condition to be throwing around money on things they won't see returns for in the near future, since they would likely not have a future! The only one really making enough money to do this is Microsoft, and Microsoft monopoly and continued monopolization of old and new markets via means such as this is what's keeping competitors from doing the same.
Hmm. Now that I think about it, the Linux ones do. You can get Red Hat or SuSE or Mandrake or OpenBSD or NetBSD for free. Look at it as a campus licensing agreement that people don't seem to know or care about.
As a case in point, I've offered several times to give out copies of Linux to the bookstore for people to get. No go. They don't even want to get the free CDs to give out.
So, yes. Microsoft's monopoly is what is keeping competitors back.
Free and Open Source Software developers, friends, and associated companies give away hundreds of billions of dollars in software and services to schools, neighbors, businesses, and the world in general without requring a change of curricula or Non-Disclosure Agreement. And only the Podunk Times-Chronicle-Gazette carried the story (hint: it's in small print, buried under the "New Fat Burning Breathrough!" article on page 7).
Hmm. Hey!
We need a Free and Open Source Software Appreciation Day! Send $10 to your favorite project or something. Spend an hour translating that page to Swahili. Hug your local Linux or BSD geek!
Actually, if your University (like mine, unfortunately) has a Campus Software Agreement, it's actually not cheap. You pay for it semester after semester, whether or not you actually use all of the Microsoft software (to the tune of several million per year ($10 million / 50 thousand applicable people == 200 per year per person (you pay for this in your campus privilege fees). If someone has exact numbers on the cost of a Campus Agreement, please post!). Not only that, but a previous version is required. Therefore, if you buy a new PC, you're unlikely to actually be able to use the new version (because you already have it, as required of the OEM by Microsoft). If you do end up going down to buy a copy from your uni, you most likely don't need a new version; your old one would likely have kept you just fine (how many are still using Windows 98 with Office 97?), so you're actually shelling out quite a bit for software you either don't need or wouldn't buy ordinarily.
Indeed, you're actually paying several times ($1000-2000?) what you would ordinarily be paying.
Microsoft, of course, loves this. You (myself included!) feel like you're not getting your money's worth if you don't go down and stock up on software you're already paying for. On top of that, you're spamming friends and relatives with the latest versions of MS Office, Windows Media Player, and requesting software for their latest version. You're becoming a vital cog in their upgrade treadmill and are more effectively advertising Microsoft than their marketing department could(!), and you're paying for the privilege of helping Microsoft!
That's funny. On my single K6-2 450 with 160MB RAM, it's very fast and lightweight (the whole virtual memory space is currently 12MB, according to top).
Maybe you're thinking of Microsoft Gnumeric?
Heh.
;)
In all seriousness, Linux works around major known bugs (e.g. F00F; you'll see Linux detecting it if you boot Linux on an affected box), and can load the latest microcode to fix any bugs the chipmaker has since squashed (if your CPU supports it, install microcode support in the kernel and install the microcode and the update; Red Hat has it by default; you'll see it patch when the system boots (dunno about other distros))
If you're wanting to recite the Top 9.9999999999999537123 Reasons to Love Your Pentium (or something like that; published (in Byte?) back in '94?), I'm all for it.
If you convert it to OpenOffice, you have scripting support via StarBasic. It should be identical on all platforms on which OO runs. You'll probably want to grab the OO SDK, though since (last I checked) the StarBasic documentation was best in there w.r.t. the object model.
They have a poor track record on this. Take, as a recent example, their forced opening of protocols vital to Windows from the anti-trust case. Where was that link? Aaah:
This IM thing is a new development. There probably aren't any sources to cite yet, since this is new. However, their past behavior is indicative of future misbehavior, especially in this (interoperability) regard. Doubly so since, in the above quote, Microsoft was forced by the U.S. Department of Justice to reveal the protocols, whereas they are not required to reveal their past, present, or future IM protocols. If they're not licensing protocols under the duress of the U.S. Government, how much less are they going to interoperate voluntarily?
Microsoft simply isn't the benevolent dictator we wish it were.
They have it on the Z. Check the zaurus.com feeds (docs.zaurus.com/feed) for qpe-nethack
make my calculations faster. Seriously. I can already do numerical stuff on my Zaurus via QPlot (and Calculon and Formulae 1, in the near future), but the Z's ARM chip lacks a floating point unit and is generally a slower chip than is current (is a Z SL 5500). More power is always welcome in my PDA. While my desktop and the group's cluster are for more intense stuff, I really like having the Z around to do a quick plot or if my desktop is far away and I need to do some numerical stuff.
;)
Now, the probability of me feeling a woman's breast is for me to know and you to, well, not know.
....and falling!
I work on some projects as a hobby. Yes, people do drop out. People also get on board, so it about equals out (given a constant userbase). Some of the "hobby" programmers are actually paid programmers by day as well.
:)
;)
Some projects have companies helping out (e.g. Sun, IBM, Red Hat, SuSE, Ximian/Novell, etc.) and the programmers are paid by the company. These are usually the ones that are big and important. Hobby projects can evolve to this point.
Some projects get funded by donations, and the author works on it as a hobby. I think all "hobby" category projects fall into this, whether or not they're actively receiving or soliciting for donations; no one would say no to funding!
Some projects are by students or faculty at universities and paid for by the university, grant monies, and/or donations.
Some projects are government research and entirely funded by the government.
Some projects are created and mostly controlled by a company.
Really, there's nothing to fear here. Judge the software on its merits alone, not on whether or not it has another entity backing it. If it's good software, others will likely help out if the current developers leave.
Continued development is not guaranteed, but neither is the solvency of a business you buy software from. If a business goes bankrupt and/or its products discontinued, you have no recourse. If, on the other hand, an Open Source project is discontinued, others can pick up where the original developers left off. Either way, you still have a functional piece of software left (more functional, actually, in the Open Source case, since it can be recompiled for changes in extra-project dependencies, such as new library versions).
Thinking about it a little further, essentially the same economics are in effect for Open Source as for Paid/Proprietary Software. Resources are exchanged. In paid software, the company receives only money, in Open Source software, the project receives monies as well as labor (programming, documentation, sales, marketing, etc.) in exchange for the product. The more successful (i.e. widespread) a software is, the more resources the company and/or project receives. While not every copy of Open Source software is recompensed (by monies or by labor), neither is every copy of Proprietary software recompensed (paid).
Actually, that last bit would make a very interesting PhD dissertation or Master's thesis, if one were so inclined. My field of study, unfortunately, is not in that area, so it's left as an exercise for the reader.
Actually, given that they claim to support Real 8--for which there are players on those Other OSes and thus should play on other platforms--your analogy falls apart.
The Windows + IE requirement is artificial, since the movies would stream onto a Mac, Linux, Solaris, or other box.
Furthermore, even if your argument were valid, we are still free to complain, since a business is not supporting our chosen platform. This is how free markets are supposed to work. If we just shut up, they never hear from us. If we ask them (kindly) to please support our platform, they know that there is a market out there which they're not tapped into.
What's really dumb is that (so far as I can tell), there isn't anything that is Internet Explorer-, let alone Windows-specific there. If they do both Windows Media Format and Real Player 8, it should work on most all desktop OSes, since there is a Real Player 8 client for most desktop OSes (either through Real or through one of their "community" versions).
Quite assinine requirements, imho.
Indeed, the current world language is English, as the European language was French before it, and Latin before that.
The inconsistancies you cited in the english phonic -> symbolic translation are pretty much an artifact of importing and mixing various words adn phrases (both inside the English Isles and outside). If we had the German (and apparently French) system of officially revising the Official English Language (whatever that might be), then we could eradicate the inconsistancies. However, that would cut out a chunk of the fun and history of the language. It's a tradeoff. You might also investigate the most recent revision to German, which was very much disputed (and currently is disputed, although to a lesser extent). Some (most, I think) places still use the old Rechtschreibung, because the new spellings have lost the old spelling's beauty. (that, and people don't want to re-learn the new spelling)
Very, very true. I think it's already on the way out, a symptom (and cause) of which is rising anti-Americanism (sorry; anti-USA-ism just doesn't flow right). While sad in its own way (especially for us), it's also good, since it allows the chance for another culture to have the spotlight, and allows us to grow in a different direction.
When travelling abroad in Europe, I've always felt saddened by the fact that I never had to take another language in school (aside from the 2 years of Foreign Language required of me); I felt that I am missing out on something. Luckily, I've learned German (and am working on aquiring a few others to a much more limited extent ATM), but I really wish that my schools (small-town midwestern schools) had taught me Spanish in gradeschool and middleschool like my brothers' have (we moved after I left middleschool). That age is prime time for learning a new language, and it's been lost to me, because of our (lingual) americentrism. While understandable (we aren't a small country, and we don't have a ton of small neighboring countries like Europe), it's still sad.
So far as I know, Bratkartoffeln is not about Chips, it's about fried potatoes. Different animals. I was served Bratkartoffeln in Germany; it consisted of sliced potatoes, cooked in a pan on the stove, with onions, maybe ham (has been a while), and other stuff. Same as in Amiland. We just translated the name from the German. Or did you translate it from English? Or did it get invented elsewhere? Or at the same time? Back up your assertion that the Germans invented it and that it was named Bratkartoffeln.
Stimmt, Meerrettich is called horseradish in the USA. It sounds like "Mare radish" to the non-German speaker, and is quite possibly mistranslated. Or maybe you should call it the ancient Egyptians called it instead of "ocean radish".
We don't change every word, though. consider (as a very small taste):
They are all English words, borrowed directly from other languages. There are tons more. Point is, it's fairly random, due to the random nature of poeple.
Nun jetzt, im Ernst. Lass' den Hass, bitte. Die Welt waere viel gemuetlicher wenn wir einander lieben und verstehen koennten.
Dein Spruch selbst war arrogant, und du hast es ja (soweit ich weiss) nicht erkannt.
Tja, fuer die Deutsche ist Arroganz etwas, was sie nur in anderen erkennen knnen. N, ich kenne zu viele nicht-arrogante Deutsche. War wohl nur einen Vorurteil, genau wie Deiner.
(ps: as one of the arrogant, ignorant, stupid, fremdenfeindliche Amis, I rather like the word (courriel). Has a nice ring to it.)
No, you completely misunderstood what I was saying.
Point is, the OS, as viewed by the end user, would include a browser. Someone in the supply chain would include one, however no browser would be forced to be on everyone's desks.
Within your (popular) car-analogy framework, we have:
Today's Situation
You buy your car from a Honda dealership, a Toyota dealership, a Ford dealership, or a used car dealership down the street. From whomever you purchase a car, the situation's the same. Because Exxon made the engine, it requires Exxon gas. Helpfully, they've included Exxon gas with your car. You can use other gas, but Exxon recommends their own gas (and requires you use it at least a little, because of how they designed the engine; heck, you've heard a silly rumor that Exxon engines sometimes turn on the engine warning light if they detect the wrong (i.e. non-Exxon) type wheel, carbuerator, distributor cap, etc., especially the once-popular but now rare DR-DOS wheel, and you've wondered once or twice in your daydreams if this couldn't have also led to some of the problems you experienced with your Exxon engine when you've used non-Exxon gas), so 95% of the car drivers out there buy only Exxon gas. Coincidentally, since the market on gas has collapsed (due to Exxon's monopoly position and abuse thereof? But you're Joe User and don't notice or care about such things), most gas stations only sell Exxon gas. They will serve you Exxon gas, and a few will let you tank up with other types of gas, but the vast majority of users drive their Ford, Toyota, Volkswagen, Volvo, or whatever still using their Exxon engine with the Exxon gas, and blissfully visiting Exxon-only stations.
Oh, yeah. You've vaguely heard somewhere (being Joe User, not the Greenpeace type) that Exxon's not the happy-friendly company they portray themselves to be, but rather reportedly had a bad spill up somewhere in the North, and have been rather rude to Shell and BP recently, the only (minor) competition left to them. You've also heard some rumours (you're still a little more informed than most of the Joe Users out there in some aspects) vague rumblings about problems with Exxon engines and about the number of odd things (insects?) that turn up in the Exxon gas. But, all this didn't make it into the mainstream media, since Exxon also owns a large portion of some major news sites, and since everyone knows and uses Exxon, and they seem such a nice company....
The Proposed Situation:
We still assume that all car manufacturers ship with Exxon engines. However, in this situation, Exxon actually is the happy, friendly company they portray themselves to be. The car dealers or their suppliers are allowed to ship whatever gas they want to in the cars they sell. Exxon might (or might not) require a little Exxon gas now and again, but the other gas is of higher quality and has more features (cleans various things, helps prevent those annoying attackers from effectively using sugar in your gas tank, etc.), so many dealerships and people ship the gas they like to use. Of course, you're free at some dealerships to come with your own gas, or to select from a (sometimes wide!) variety of gas. And the dealerships sometimes also get a kickback from the gas vendors, for giving people a chance to try their gas.
And that's the way I see it.
Usually, your hardware vendor would install a browser of their choice before you ever see the OS. If you get a white box, then you could use a floppy disk or cdr to either get the mini installer (the one that pulls the rest from over the net and has only a minimal footprint) or the full version (on cdr, with whatever other software you wanted). Whoever sold you the OS (i.e. the shop you purchased it from) could easily also add the browser to the OS or just give you an additional Applications CD with a browser on it. (is also common practice with other things, albeit a declining one, thanks the Microsoft's monopolies and peoples' reluctance to think beyond the microeconomics of their specific situation)
Really, not having a browser forced on every OS sold isn't that big of a deal; actually, it's great for the people selling hardware or OS CDs (they can get a cut from whomever they decide to give you). Microsoft "axe[d] [that] baby" when it tried to "cut off [Netscape's] air supply" by bundling IE with the monopoly's operating system and forcing vendors to ship it. Heck, even integrating it into the OS could be done in an open, modular fashion, so that one could pull IE and put in another browser. Wouldn't be good for Microsoft, though.
If you're creative, I bet you could see a plethora of other ways for middleware vendors to get in on the action (both in Free Software and a Friendly Microsoft world).
Globally setting sending text messages instead of html:
Edit->Preferences:
Mail&Newsgroups:
Send Format:
Set the send format to what you want. You can send all HTML, all text, ask you, or send it in both. Additionally, you can set plain text and html domains here.
Kiosk mode and full-screen mode are two different things.
Full-screen mode is for full-screen operation.
Kiosk mode is full-screen plus lots of lockdown options. Search bugzilla for more information on the kiosk mode development. It's in development.
Hmm. Yes. Interoperating with MSFT is generally much harder than it need be, especially from Linux. This isn't Linux, though; it's Microsoft. Ask the SAMBA, OpenOffice, or one of the other teams about how easy it is to reverse-engineer Microsoft's ever-changing stuff. And what's more, Microsoft deliberately changes their stuff to prevent interop.
If you want to interact with Microsoft, you need to get Microsoft to change. I say, change 'em with your wallet.
[BTW, it actually isn't as bad as it seems; OpenOffice hasn't had problems with documents I've been given, SAMBA can talk MSFT's proprietary protocol, and Linux can read/write MSFT's filesystems. Interop isn't that bad, but it's not 100% guaranteed, for the reasons I've outlined, plus the fact that they're MSFT trade secrets, and thus have to be reverse-engineered. Ideally, Microsoft would use open formats, but then they couldn't leverage their monopoly nearly as effectively.]